Tuesday, 8 March 2022, 6.45pm for 7pm
Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in London,
30 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2BU (Subject to Covid restrictions)
Dr. George Beccaloni who worked at London’s Natural History Museum gave a talk in March on the important 19th century scientist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and the Wallace Correspondence Project (WCP).
If you missed the event, click here to see the recording of the event.
Dr. George Beccaloni, a zoologist, evolutionary biologist, taxonomist, museum curator, and science historian who worked at London’s Natural History Museum, will give a talk on the important 19th century scientist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and the Wallace Correspondence Project (WCP).
The project aims to locate, digitise, catalogue, transcribe, interpret and publish the surviving correspondence and other manuscripts of Wallace. Wallace has very many claims to fame, not least that he is the ‘father’ of evolutionary biogeography and the co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the process of evolution by natural selection; a discovery he made in Indonesia in 1858.
The WCP has so far obtained electronic copies of 5,688 letters, of which 2,748 were written by Wallace and 2,159 were sent to him. The remaining 781 are third party letters which pertain to him. The letters are a biographical treasure trove, and provide a far better picture of the ‘real’ Wallace than his heavily edited and censored published writings. They are also key to gaining a deeper understanding of his scientific and other work: how and why his ideas arose, and how they developed over time.